Lucky
by Psychedelica
Summary: The nurses say he's lucky to be alive. He doesn't feel lucky. Post TGG.


John doesn't remember much from that day. After all, he did hit his head pretty hard on the edge of the pool.

The doctors say he's lucky to be alive. Hell, everyone at Scotland Yard says he's lucky to be alive!

John doesn't feel lucky.

oOo

"When do you think he'll wake up?" he asks quietly.

The nurse smiles sadly at him. "I'm afraid it's too early to tell."

John drops his gaze, stares at the man's long pale fingers, because he knows that if he looks at his face, he'll lose it.

John's suffered severe head injuries, a broken arm, and three broken ribs, but what's worse, his limp has come back.

OoO

"John, are you ready to make your statement now?" asks Lestrade gently, as if speaking to a child.

Despite the mild amnesia, he wants to give a statement. _Needs _to give a statement. Jim Moriarty's body was never recovered, which could mean he's still out there, deadly as ever.

oOo

"I am so, so sorry."

"Molly, it's not your fault," he says, and tries to smile, but he hasn't been able to smile since before the incident.

He doesn't know how to comfort her. He knows she still loves Sherlock, despite going out with Jim, and so she thinks it's all her fault.

John won't admit it, but he thinks it's all her fault too.

OoO

"We've reviewed the security footage from the hospital, around the time you first met this Moriarty fellow."

John glances up expectantly. Lestrade is becoming a regular visitor; he gives him updates on the case almost every day.

Lestrade sighs. "Ten minutes of the tape are just blank. Someone's been tampering with the CCTV."

"Moriarty," John murmurs. It isn't a question.

"Or one of his accomplices. Don't beat yourself up about it, John. There was nothing you could have done."

oOo

John still dreams about that night, going out to see Sarah but never arriving. Despite the amnesia, he can remember the precise expression on Sherlock's face when he stepped out of the shadows and began reciting the words he was hearing through his earpiece. For the slightest instant, a fraction of a second, Sherlock actually looked _betrayed_. He honestly thought – just for a millisecond –that John was the evil mastermind behind all this.

He remembers seeing Sherlock's finger slowly squeeze the trigger, remembers leaping up and tacking Sherlock into the swimming pool just as the bullet hit the parka.

Unfortunately, the explosion was bigger and faster than expected. John remembers his arms being torn away from around Sherlock's waist, remembers being flung through the air like a tennis ball, colliding with the edge of the swimming pool. He remembers the taste of chlorine mixed with blood, remembers darkness and pain and panic that he can't see Sherlock. But one image remains in his mind as he drifts into unconsciousness, one image that lessens the pain and softens the blow, one image that almost – _almost _– brings a smile to his face.

The image of that smug smirk being wiped off Moriarty's face, and being replaced with pure horror.

When John wakes fitfully from the nightmares, he focuses on this one beautiful image, and then he's able to get back to sleep.

OoO

John knew it was over with Sarah way before the incident at the pool. Ever since that first-date-gone-wrong, their relationship has been strained. They are never on the same wavelength, and for once, opposites don't attract.

She visits him in hospital nonetheless.

They argue. John can't remember what it was about. Probably Sherlock. That's what they usually argue about.

Sarah storms out.

John tells her never to come back.

For once, she actually listens to him.

oOo

John has been in hospital nine days when he starts reading to Sherlock. He firmly believes that coma patients are aware of what's going on around them.

He doesn't read fiction. Sherlock is awfully picky when it comes to fiction. He doesn't read scientific fact-books in case Sherlock finds it unnecessary and it clogs up his hard drive. Instead, he reads him every newspaper he can get his hands on. He read until his voice is hoarse and scratchy, and is then shooed from Sherlock's room by a nurse who needs to run some tests.

OoO

Mycroft stops by a few times. John notices the bags under his eyes grow heavier and heavier the longer Sherlock stays under. He and Mycroft sit in silence at Sherlock's bedside for hours, both desperately wanting him to sit up in bed and start teasing them sarcastically.

oOo

"You're being discharged, Mr Watson," a nurse says cheerfully one morning.

John doesn't even have the heart to correct her and say 'Doctor Watson'.

John can't go back to the flat – not with all those reminders of Sherlock's old, vibrant self.

That night he settles down in the armchair by Sherlock's bedside, lulled to sleep by the rhythmic _beep-beep-beep_ of the heart monitor.

OoO

Not once in the next month does John return to Baker Street. He only sees Mrs Hudson when they bump into each other in the hospital these days. Mrs Hudson always cries when she sees the sling and the old limp. John hasn't cried once.

He refuses to mourn a man whose heart is still beating.

Most nights he sneaks into the hospital and sleeps in Sherlock's room. Sometimes the staff kick him out, though. On those nights he stays at a cheap hotel. A couple of times, he's slept on Lestrade's sofa. Lestrade doesn't mind, and neither do his wife and kids. In fact, John feels like he's growing closer to the man now his only friend is gone.

oOo

One afternoon, he's sitting in Lestrade's living room, watching football with the DI. Mrs Lestrade and the kids are at some relative's house. For some reason, it's then that it finally hits him: _What if Sherlock never wakes up?_

He chokes back a sob and dashes for the bathroom, where he consequently throws up until there's nothing left inside of him except for a ripping pain inside his chest.

Lestrade is unfazed – makes him tea, gives him paracetamol and a blanket, and talks about his childhood Red Setter until John drifts to sleep.

OoO

After that afternoon at Lestrade's, John feels like a new man. He plucks up the courage to go back home to Baker Street.

He makes himself a mug of herbal tea because the milk is off, and John can't have his PG Tips without milk.

He lays on his side on the sofa, facing the back, much like Sherlock used to. The finality of the past tense strikes him. _Much like Sherlock used to. _Will Sherlock ever lie like this again? Will he and John ever argue, will he ever sulk, will he ever practice that infernal violin at three o'clock in the morning again?

John presses his head into the Union Jack cushion and, for the first time since the bomb, he cries.

On the table, his untouched tea goes cold.


End file.
